Science

Currently the number of exoplanets is rapidly growing, with over 3500 planets discovered.
This number is expected to grow even more in the future with dedicated missions that are
expected to find additional planets.

While discovering new exoplanets is still important, we have now entered a new era, where
the better characterisation of these planets and their host stars is of extreme
importance. A technique that is being used to probe the atmosphere of an exoplanet is
transit spectroscopy. During a transit, the stellar and the planetary discs overlap, and
while a part of the stellar light is blocked by the core of the planet, another, smaller,
part is filtered through its atmosphere. Future space observatories will observe known
exoplanets to obtain their spectra and characterise their chemical consistency.

For this technique to be as efficient as possible and to organise large-scale surveys we
need to have a good knowledge of the orbital parameters of the planets observed,
especially of the expected transit time.

This is where small and medium-scale telescopes and the public can contribute
significantly and make a difference.

How? The methodology we follow is:

Obtain data with small ground telescopes: Specifically, we take photos of a star
while an exoplanet is passing in front of it. So far, we have collected a number of
observations in collaboration with amateur astronomers (nunki.gr).

Analyse the data: At this stage, we are measuring the light coming from the star.
The star seems a bit fainter when its planet transits.

Interpret the data: The drop of the light will give more information about the
planet: its size, its orbit and its transit timing.

This process needs to be done on a regular basis with the aim of tracking any changes in
the long term.

So far, our team has been working to design tools for data analysis so as to make the
process easy enough for everyone and current results can be found
here.
We believe that everyone can contribute to such an effort. The contribution by
citizen scientists is the motivation of this project, and it was outlined by
A. Kokori at the EPSC 2017 in Riga,
in this presentation.